Sympathy for the…

Norm Geras’ blog has an excellent post on a recent Guardian column by Karen Armstrong. I thought it was excellent when I first read it, before Norm demonstrated what dazzlingly good taste he has by posting a, a, well, not to put too fine a point on it a rave review of B&W. I did a Note and Comment on Armstrong myself a few weeks or months ago, making a similar point. She’s too determined to be understanding and sympathetic and inclusive and non-Eurocentric and non-Orientalist about Islam, too unwilling to just give it up and be ‘judgmental’. Having read some of her memoirs and other books on religious subjects, I take her stance to have more to do with excessive sympathy for religion than it does with, say, multiculturalism or cultural relativism; but I don’t really know that, it’s just a guess. In any case, the effect is the same.

Armstrong’s diagnosis of the problem of terrorism is multi-factor, but it comes down to two threads: the fundamentalist-reaction-against-modernity thread and the Western-complicity-in-political-and-social-injustice thread. But prescriptively it’s only the second thread which counts. In this she is wholly representative of the post-9/11 liberal and leftist ‘doves’.

It’s interesting to ponder what the implications of taking the first thread seriously might be. Perhaps that’s why Armstrong drops it – why most people drop it. Because if you start to argue that we really ought to pay attention to what al Qaeda wants, i.e. give it to them, then one has to start contemplating the joys of living under an Islamic theocracy – an especially thrilling prospect for a woman. Gosh, I’m so spoiled, I’m so used to going out of the house whenever I want to, without having to ask a man for permission, let alone having to stay in unless a man I’m related to will come with me. It would be a bit of an adjustment, frankly, to have to start doing things bin Laden’s way.

And yet some people do make that argument, sort of, almost, partly. Or they hint at it, they gesture at it, they mumble about it, without actually coming out and saying Yes we should let people like bin Laden call the shots and if that means a little less freedom for half of humanity, well, so be it. At least I don’t know what else is behind all the reproachful noises people make about secularists and atheists refusing to take religion ‘on its own terms’. There is another post with similar comments from readers here.

Related posts

5 Responses to “Sympathy for the…”

I dunno, OB. I think you undermine yourself by oversimplifying sometimes. True, Bin Laden probably does want a nasty, oppressive theocracy. But the widespread Muslim support, or sympathy, for al Qaeda is more complex than that. The reaction against modernity is partly due to the experience of social and political injustices. Modernity means, to some, submitting to the whims of powerful foreign bodies.

Of course, I agree with you that Islam, or any religion or organisation, should not be above criticism. I suppose I am saying that you can’t entirely extricate the two strands, as you want to do.

No, really; no doubt I do, Armando, being less than perfect and all. I try not to, of course, but don’t we all. (No, actually, but that’s another issue.)

But I don’t necessarily disagree with you about the widespread sympathy for bin Laden. That’s why for instance I talked about the CIA and Mossadegh in a Note last month – http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/notesarchive.php?id=185. But I was talking about al Qaeda itself, not the more diffuse support for it. The guys in those airplanes were the very opposite of ‘freedom fighters’.

1: It is ever too easy to identify a muslim / terrorism overlap, and as witness I should cite……. President Khatami of Iran. A learned, cultured and thoughtful man, who post 11/9 (cultural differences? I am British) pointed out that what we see as the consequence or even goals of the terrorism that produced 11/9 is nihilism. Nihilism has a place and a history within western philosophy, but no place within Islam.

2. Norm Geras’s encomium/blog on B&W cites Cole Porter in support. There was a song by Cole Porter which never went very far because it was so quickly pastiched by Noel Coward. e.g. Where Cole Porter had “You chose another, So did I” Noel Coward put “You chose your brother, So did I” Wholly irrelevant, but you might be interested.

True enough. But my intention is not to conflate Islam and terrorism, but rather to argue that Islam has no particular claim to immunity from criticism, any more than, say, the Catholic Church in the UK, as I pointed out in a Note on the Archbishop of Manchester.

That cultural difference over how to write the date – tell me about it! as we say over here. My ignorance of that difference meant that the crammer I attended at 17 thought I was eight months younger than I was, so assigned me to a room with three younger girls. Quite amusing.

Coward thing very funny, no matter how irrelevant. Mind you, I do think ‘You’re the Top’ has the most brilliant lyrics ever written.